For years the Newcastle University graduate worked on Tyneside as an urban designer, living with his wife Jen, a GP, in their Gosforth home, Newcastle.

But when the 30-year-old town planner decided to up sticks and relocate, he couldn’t have chosen a more isolated location.

The couple took up posts helping rural communities in the central Himalayan region with a charity action group called Chirag.

After just nine months they began working in the village of Pheriche, in the Solo Khumbu region of Nepal, providing medical assistance with the Himalayan Rescue Association (HRA), a group set-up in a yak herder’s hut in 1973.

Charged with treating casualties on the treacherous mountainside, the pair helped more than 600 patients suffering from high altitude sickness and other illnesses during their three-month stay.

Now, after flying back to the North East, Ed is planning a return trip to the Asian continent in a bid to conquer one of the planet’s biggest obstacles, Mount Everest.

Ed, who trained as a town planner and specialised in urban design before working for North Tyneside and Sunderland councils, said: “In August 2008, Jen and I were living and working in Newcastle when we decided we wanted to do something different.

“We had quite a nice lifestyle, but we felt there was something missing. So we packed in our jobs, let the house and volunteered in India for a year.

“Jen was working as a doctor but I was working on projects like helping farmers reduce their loss on rotten fruit.

“We came up with this idea that we could turn sour apples into cider vinegar. But after nine months we started working with the HRA, which 4,260m high in the Himalayas. We were dealing with western trekkers and also locals.

“It was a wonderful experience – it’s a little frightening but we loved being there and helping people. That’s why I’m trying to raise cash and awareness for the organisation.”

During their nine-month stay with the HRA, Ed and Jen were based in one of the most remote places on the planet. Just getting there takes six or seven days walking, even for the medical staff, and patients too ill to make the descent have to be airlifted out.

Now Ed is launching his Ed On Everest expedition, which will see the daring trekker tackle the highest mountain on earth from the northern Tibetan route to promote HRA and Everest ER, which provides a medical facility on the Khumbu Glacier within Everest Base Camp during the spring climbing season.

Last night Ed said: “I know it’s going to be difficult but altitude will be the main problem I face. It’s 8,848m high and that’s not an altitude I’ve ever been to before.

“Everest is very busy and it’s getting busier, so more and more people are likely to get into trouble.

“They need to get ready for the altitude, to acclimatise themselves. Everyone can do that if they go up level by level, taking it slowly.”

For Ed to achieve his life-time ambition of reaching the peak of Mount Everest, he will have to overcome some of the biggest obstacles on earth.

Mount Everest is the highest point on the surface of the planet. The peak of the mountain towers 8,848m above sea-level – nearly 1,000m above a so-called “death zone”, an altitude above which the amount of oxygen cannot sustain human life.

Conditions are so difficult past this point that most corpses have been left where they fell as rescue operations are too difficult.

In order to combat the challenge, Ed Laughton has been give a helping hand from across the region.

Gosforth gym Greens is providing his training facilities, while the Mountain Hardware store in Kathmandu has given him a full down suit for the climb and Teko/Anatom is providing expedition socks.

But he is now seeking corporate sponsorship, and is offering willing companies the chance to have a flag planted on the top of Everest.